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How to turn a letting-agent statement into a spreadsheet

Letting-agent statements aren’t easy to read, and they’re even more annoying to use. The rent, the management fee, the VAT, the odd repair, the amount actually paid to you - it’s all there on the PDF, but the moment you need it in a spreadsheet (for your accountant, your own records, or your tax return) you’re stuck retyping it line by line. Here are your options, fastest last.

Option 1: Retype it by hand

Open the PDF, open Excel, and copy each figure across. It works, but it’s slow, dull, and a single mistyped digit throws your totals out. For one statement it’s a chore; across a year and several properties it’s evenings you won’t get back.

Option 2: Copy-paste from the PDF

Slightly faster, but PDF tables almost never paste cleanly - columns collapse, numbers merge with text, and you spend as long tidying up as you saved. Scanned statements can’t be copied at all.

Option 3: Use a spreadsheet template

Free landlord templates (there are plenty) give you a tidy structure to put figures into - but they don’t read your statement for you. You’re still doing the typing; you’ve just got nicer columns to type into. (More on this in template vs. done-for-you.)

Option 4: Have it read for you

This is the shortcut RentSorter is built for. You upload the statement - typed or scanned - and it extracts every line (rent, fees, VAT, repairs, owner contributions), works out the totals, checks the statement actually adds up, and gives you a clean Excel spreadsheet to download. You review it, tweak anything you like, and you’re done in seconds rather than an evening. You can even do several statements at once and get them combined into one file.

(Wondering whether you could just paste it into ChatGPT instead? You can, once - reading a statement with ChatGPT has its own guide.)

Which should you pick?

If you’ve got one simple statement a year, retyping is survivable. If you’ve got monthly statements, multiple properties, or an HMO with lots of line items, having them read for you saves the most time and the most mistakes. And if you’re weighing this up against landlord software or an accounting app, there’s a wider look at your options for handling a statement.